US admits bombing the wrong house

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An Iraqi youth walks away from the area where it is said 14 of his relatives were buried after their house was mistakenly bombed.Photo: Reuters

US forces accidentally dropped a 227-kilogram bomb on a house
outside the northern city of Mosul, and admitted killing at least
five Iraqis.

In an unusual step, the US military released a statement saying
it had bombed the wrong house early on Saturday and expressing
regret at the loss of at least five "possibly innocent lives".

The home owner and witnesses in Aitha, about 50 kilometres south
of Mosul, put the death toll at 14, all from the same family.

Half of those killed were children, the Iraqis said, adding that
six other people were injured in the bombing. Neighbours described
a grisly, futile search for victims' remains after the brick house
was reduced to rubble in the predawn raid. "We wanted to get the
bodies out from under the debris," Zaydan Mizai said.

The attack came as US and Iraqi military planners stepped up
operations in Mosul, responding to pressure to quell violence in
Iraq's third-largest city before the national election less than
three weeks away.

Nineveh province, which includes Mosul, is among four restive
regions that US officials have described as too volatile for a vote
to be conducted safely.

President George Bush acknowledged on Friday that guerilla
action could disrupt voting in these provinces, but brushed off
criticism from a former national security adviser in his father's
administration, Brent Scowcroft, who said the elections may deepen
the Iraqi conflict.

Responding to Mr Scowcroft, Mr Bush said: "Quite the opposite. I
think elections will be such a incredibly hopeful experience for
the Iraqi people."

In Iraq, a senior member of the US forces, Brigadier-General Erv
Lessel, said he feared "a series of horrific attacks that cause
mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up
to the elections".

Concerned by the growing insurgency, the Pentagon is sending a
retired army general to Iraq to review US military operations and
the training of Iraqi forces there.

Gary Luck, who headed US forces in South Korea, will go to Iraq
this week.

Newsweek has reported that the Pentagon is also debating
whether to set up elite hit squads to target leaders of the Iraqi
resistance in a strategy based on tactics used against leftist
guerillas in Central America 20 years ago.

Saturday's bombing came amid continued violence that has claimed
almost 100 lives in the past week. At least five Iraqis, including
two policemen and three civilians, were killed when US troops
opened fire after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb at a
checkpoint in Yussifiyah, 15 kilometres south of Baghdad, police
said.

The body of Ali Ghalib, the Sunni head of the provincial council
for Salahuddin province, was found on Saturday night riddled with
bullets on the road between Baghdad and the holy city of Najaf.

Mr Ghalib was abducted on the road on Friday while returning to
Tikrit from Najaf, after seeking the support of Grand Ayatollah Ali
al- Sistani for a six-month delay in the election, said Shuaib
Dujaili, a Tikrit official. The fate of three Iraqis accompanying
Mr Ghalib was unknown.

Meanwhile, Charles Graner, the accused ringleader of the Abu
Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, restated a not guilty plea at his
court martial on Friday. His lawyer insisted the US soldier was
only following orders but that his superiors were unlikely to face
justice.

Graner and Private Lynndie England, with whom he fathered a
child, became the faces of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal
after they appeared in photographs that showed degraded, naked
prisoners.

A Pentagon official said the US was now holding 325
foreign fighters in Iraq, a number that the official said had
increased by 140 since November 7, just before the invasion of
Falluja. Many of the non-Iraqis were captured in or around that
city.